


More Us Every Day

by Bakageta



Series: This Sort of Thing in Particular [2]
Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Cannon-typical Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Gen, Getting to Know Each Other, I don't think it's too crazy but ymmv, Minor Body Horror, Other, Physical Transformation, Slice of Life, but you don't have to, non-sexual biting, probably, slice of life with a tiny plot, they/them pronouns, you can read this as pairing stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-10
Updated: 2018-12-23
Packaged: 2019-09-02 23:55:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 7,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16797247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bakageta/pseuds/Bakageta
Summary: “You think there’ll be more changes?”Maybe. A beat of silence.Probably.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Little Things](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16483280) by [ShadowoftheLamp](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShadowoftheLamp/pseuds/ShadowoftheLamp). 



> Inspired by ShadowoftheLamp's fic Little Things, written because I wanted more of This Sort of Thing in Particular.
> 
> There are a lot of little tropes/head cannons/things from the comic I've noticed and liked while reading Venom fic, in particular in this fic: Venom is the name of Eddie and the symbiote together, they/them pronouns for V, and Venom is referred to plurally.

“So.” Eddie began from their hiding place nestled amongst the support beams under the deck of one of San Francisco’s many piers. “What the hell was that?”

**_What was what?_ **

“Don’t be coy, V. You know I’m not that strong.”

He thinks of the mad escape they just made from some group of men-in-black mystery motherfuckers. They’d been way too prepared with flares and some kind of directional sound cannons that they’d used to herd Venom exactly where the assholes had wanted them to be. At least they had until Eddie had been forced to take over or else risk separation. Still, he’d been as surprised as they had when he’d literally torn through the chain link fence that blocked escape from the alley the suits had pinned them in.

It had gotten less surprising as he’d kept running (at a rather alarming speed for the average human Eddie now realized), launching himself over fences and around corners, knocking over food carts, and shoving small cars out of the way. He’d gone to the bay after mostly losing his pursuers and finished losing them by swimming a few piers down.

He wasn’t even that winded.

**_I told you, we are better together._ **

“Yeah, together, like...” He sent a memory of them racing along the streets of San Francisco as Venom, fully masked and chasing down a member of a human trafficking ring.

There’s a feeling of an exaggerated sigh from the part of his mind where the symbiote is recovering from their chase.

**_Stupid Eddie, we are one, we are always together._ **

“So when we...” blurred memories of their first hurried escape from the LIFE foundation, springing over guards heads and leaving a dent in the wall, knocking a security door off of its hinges, tearing open a fence, and knocking over a small tree. “That was me?”

 **_No, that was us,_ ** (an image of them masked) **_our bond was too new for us to be anything else._ **

“Okay so if this is more recent, why haven’t I been, I don’t know, crushing doorknobs and breaking glasses?”

**_You still know how hard to hold things, that did not change, just now you can do more than you could when you were alone._ **

He gets the idea from V that he’s got the best possible strength for a human of his body type plus a little extra from the symbiote's body woven into the fibers of his muscles, and tendons, and bones.

They sit in silence for awhile and V goes back to recovering their self, before Eddie reaches out and grabs the tree-thick pier that they’ve been leaning on. He grips it hard, as hard as he thinks he can, and there’s no change in the heavy wood. It isn’t until he closes his eyes and focuses that the wood starts to splinter under his fingers.

He stops before he does any real structural damage.

“How do I make you stronger, V?” Eddie wonders, other than a refuge from the atmosphere he couldn’t think of anything. He doesn’t want to feel like he’s a (ha!) parasite taking from his symbiote and not giving anything back.

 **_We reflect each other_ .** V says as a thin tendril emerges from Eddie’s collarbone and wraps loosely around Eddies neck several times. _**T**_ ** _ogether we are stronger and together we do not burn in Earth’s stupid air._ **

And before Eddie can even think that he was right and all he is is a hiding place, V leads his mind down through their link and into their body. They show him the part of their self that is looped around his neck, how there is a thin layer of epithelial cells covering it and protecting them. Some of the cells are Eddie’s but the others are theirs, ones they’re able to make only because they have Eddie to pattern themselves off of..

“Oh.” Eddie breaths dumbly as his mind surfaces in his body.

**_What we have is new, Eddie, we are more us every day._ **

Eddie catches the under current in the symbiote’s words.

“You think there’ll be more changes?”

 **_Maybe._ ** A beat of silence. **_Probably._ **

“Let’s just try not to be too obvious about them, then, I guess.”


	2. Chapter 2

“So what’s, like, a normal high temperature for a regular human being?” Eddie asks, for once actually using the bluetooth earpiece to talk to someone who wasn’t literally inside his head as he stood at the railing of the pier he’d hidden under a few weeks ago.

There’s a sigh on the other end of the line, and for a moment Eddie thinks maybe he shouldn’t have called Dan, before Dan answers.

“How high is your temperature, Eddie?”

“Ehhh.. like maybe 106 or... 107-ish…”

“Okay, anyone else that is a medical emergency, I’m assuming you feel fine? No dizziness, headache, nausea, or vomiting?”

“Yeah, I’m fine, not having any of that.”

“Well, then normal high, depending on what textbook you go by, is around 99.5 fahrenheit. The highest recorded temperature that a person survived to my knowledge was 115 in a patient with heat stroke.”

“Huh…” Eddie trails off. He’s really glad that he’d only kept V a secret for a few weeks after he’d returned, just long enough for his other to recover their strength (for him to be sure they were really there and not desperate, wishful thinking), otherwise he’d be stuck figuring this out with only his basic knowledge hampering V’s ability to explain. They would have figured it out eventually, but it was good, Eddie thought, to have support. It was something he’d done without for most of his life and he was only now learning to appreciate it.

“Could you ask your… friend, is this normal? Is 106 fahrenheit supposed to be your new baseline?”

Eddie nudges V, who’d been looking at the sea lions darting through the water with Eddie’s eyes, replaying Dan’s question.

**_It’s where our internal thermostat is set now, we’ve got the energy and your immune system works better. I don’t see any reason to change it._ **

_ You just don’t want to catch another cold, do you? _

Eddie sucked at being sick normally, but with V it was twice as bad. That had been a terrible three days of the two of them wallowing in their shared misery followed by another three days of constant bitching about their too slow recovery.

**_Yes, but I didn’t do this. This is--_ **

_ An Us thing, I get it. Can you tell him yourself, you know it better. _

A put upon huff.  **_Fine._ **

“ **I changed our set-point, our immune system works better** .” V says with Eddie’s mouth, somehow managing to make his voice almost as deep as it sounded in Eddie’s head.

( _ But you just _ \-- **_He won’t understand Us things, Eddie._ ** _ Not sure I agree, but fine _ )

“Oh! Hey!” Eddie hadn’t realized Dan’s voice could go that high, “Hello Venom, So I’ll just make sure to keep that in mind if you guys ever need me…” Dan trails off awkwardly.

“ **Won’t** ,” V says bluntly, annoyed by the misnaming (they were Venom together), but he continues once Eddie prods him ( _ be nice. _ ). “ **But it is... appreciated** .”

“Anyway,” Eddie butts back in. “Thanks for answering my stupid question, Dan. I’ll see you around?”

“Sure, actually, Anne and I were wondering if you had time to come over for dinner?” Dan sounded a little subdued, but Eddie thought he was doing a pretty good job of keeping up.

“Sure, I’ll text ya.” Eddie said and after a few more pleasantries they hung up.

(He thinks that if anyone would at least try to understand his and V’s ‘Us things’ it would be Dan and Anne.)

He wonders idly when he would have noticed his temperature if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Chen commenting on him getting sick again after their hands brushed while he was paying her for their groceries. It was what amounted to a hot summer, for San Francisco at least, and he hadn’t noticed that he was any sweatier than he normally was.

**_You didn’t notice because it’s our normal now._ **

_ Just like I didn’t realize how strong I was. _

**_Yes. Can we go to that chocolate store?_ ** V drew their eyes towards said store.

“Yeah, sure,” Eddie said then checked his wallet. “We’ve got a fifty dollar budget, though”

**_I’ll manage_ ** . V said sounding as if that would be the hardest thing they did all day.  **_Probably._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So it turns out, if you upload a draft and save it so you can waffle about posting it for over a week, when you get around to posting that fic it gets backdated to the day you uploaded the draft. That's an interesting thing I learned on Monday December 10th when I published my saved draft of the first chapter, wondered why it didn't appear on the first page, and then noticed it was dated on the first.
> 
> Ooops.


	3. Chapter 3

Anne was the one who noticed the next change.

They were all watching a post-dinner movie at Anne and Dan’s place when she glanced over at them and gasped.

“Eddie, your eyes.”

“Hwhaa?” Eddie asked eloquently, his mouth full of popcorn, from his position on the recliner.

She paused the move (something bright and full of action, cars, and explosions in a desert) and handed Eddie her phone, already opened to the front-facing camera.

It’s obvious what Anne meant when he gets a look at his eyes. His pupils are so small as to be pinpricks and his irises have paled drastically from their usual grey-green. V, who had been a fist sized head resting on his shoulder, abruptly disappeared with a twist of something uncomfortable that Eddie felt in his gut.

“Well,” Eddie said, swallowing his food. “That’s definitely new.”

“Eddie,” Anne is visibly tense. “What do you mean by that?”

“Ah… Dan didn’t tell you about my crazy temperature thing...?” Eddie was trying not to shrink away from Anne’s concern for his health. He wasn’t doing a very good job of it, though.

He looked away into the dim room, the lights had been turned off for the movie, and Eddie notes that it’s not anywhere near as dark as it should be especially since he’d been staring at a bright TV screen for the past hour. True, what he’s seeing is desaturated, but there’s no detail lost otherwise.

“He did, but Eddie this seems like it’s a little more involved then that.”

She’s worried, and Eddie has to concede her point. Neither of them are sure exactly where this is going, but they trust each other and that’s enough to soothe any unease that Eddie feels about the whole thing.

“They did it again.” Dan speaks up. He’s leaning forward, caught between the remains of his anxiety, medical curiosity, and respect for their boundaries. Eddie’s pretty sure it’s only because he’s a guest that Dan hasn’t run off to get his penlight and done an eye exam on him.

Anne’s phone is still unlocked and in it’s screen Eddie can see that his pupils are dilated wide to catch every bit of light to allow him to see into the dark room. His irises were a darker shade of green now, almost black, as though the pigment had been bunched up instead of stretched thin like earlier. How would his eyes look normally if this is what they did when he wasn't in a dark room with a bright TV.

_**They will look normal in regular light.**_ There’s a frisson of anxiety coming from V, and Eddie gives them a mental nudge. Instead of answering directly, his other sends him a bundle of thoughts and feelings.

They’ve learned that humans don’t like different things (through TV, documentaries, Eddie’s memories of his old show, and their guilty recollections of Maria’s own experiences) and that humans seek to get rid of things that are too different (which is something that they and Eddie most definitely are). They know that Eddie trusts Anne and they know that Anne trusts Dan, and for the most part they trust that Eddie’s trust isn’t misplaced (He knows Anne and he knows people well enough, they’re pretty sure). But still...

_But still._

But still there is an anxiety. Humans don’t like different things and, despite Eddie’s trust, Anne and Dan are very human. And they are painfully aware that the two humans know how to separate them.

_They wouldn’t_. Eddie sends, then corrects himself because he knows Anne better than that. _At least not without a very good reason. They want to make sure you’re not causing any (mental/physical/painful) harm to me_.

**_Would never_**.

_I know, just help me explain_.

**_Okay_ **. And then there’s a bubble of knowledge pushed to Eddie. It’s mostly stuff he already knew intuitively put into more solid terms, but there’s new things too, not anything truly important, but still good to know.

“It is and it isn’t.” Eddie said after what was probably a significant pause from Anne and Dan’s point of view. He leaned forward and set Anne’s phone on the table before staring resolutely ahead.

“V’s people,” ( _Klyntar_ ) the new term rose to his mind, and it was nice to know the name. “They’re meant to adapt to wherever they land. Take the best traits and then move on.”

“It’s normally a one way street. They don’t…” He hesitates and glances momentarily to Anne. “They don’t normally form a bond like we have. Our’s is two way, V benefits and... so do I.”

“So this isn’t a…”Anne fumbles uncharacteristically for a word, “It isn’t a surprise for you, you’re okay?”

“They told me the first time I noticed something, They weren’t sure if this kind of thing would happen before then, but either humans are just that adaptable or we’re just that compatible.” Eddie shrugged. “I’m kinda playing it by ear, but right now I’m okay.”

“Okay...”

_And there's that trust._ This was definitely not the end of this conversation, but Anne was laying her worries to rest for now.

“Hey, can I check something really quickly?” Dan asked, breaking the tension from across the dim living room before it could even start to shift from tense to awkward. He was holding his phone half raised in front of his chest.

“Sure?” Eddie agreed hesitantly.

“Cool.” Dan quickly snapped a picture with the flash on, blinding Eddie for an instant and leaving spots in his eyes afterwards.

“ **Rude**!” V hissed through Eddie’s mouth, but Dan barely hesitated, crossing the living room with deliberate movements to show Eddie the picture.

It’s a fairly normal shitty candid phone picture until you look at Eddie’s face which is nearly impossible to see beyond the two bright white-green lights that had taken the place of his eyes.

“You have tapetum lucidum, Eddie,” Dan said. “Like Mr. Belvedere.”

“Neat. Dan. Really. Neat.” Eddie gritted out. “Please don’t do that again…”

The other man has the decency to look chagrined. “I won’t, I just... got a little ahead of myself.”

“It’s fine, just, let’s finish the movie okay?”

And that’s what they do, everyone settling back down. V re-emerging and thinking quietly to themself that maybe Eddie was right and everything would probably be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter will be up on Sunday, but it'll be a little later since I don't have to get up at ass o'clock for work. Comment's Kudos are welcome!


	4. Chapter 4

“V, remember when I said we shouldn’t be too obvious about any changes?”

There’s a sense of sleepy confusion coming from the vicinity of Eddie’s left kidney as he stands in front of his bathroom mirror.

**_Yeeeessss?_ **

“Care to explain why my mouth looks like a low rent wolfman’s?”

The confusion is replaced by embarrassment, of all goddamn things.

**_May have gotten carried away…_ ** V trails off as they emerge from Eddie’s left shoulder blade to peek around him and into the mirror that he’s currently grimacing at.

“No shit, I thought you were just growing back the tooth that got knocked out?”

(They had broken up a bar fight at last night’s dinner date with Anne and Dan, but not before taking a sucker punch to the mouth. Eddie hadn’t let V fix them  _ (not in public, V _ ) until after they had gotten home and stretched out on their bed already half asleep. The drunk got away with only a badly broken hand because, despite the symbiote’s urging, being drunk and stupid was not enough to fall into bad guy territory.)

**_Was going to._ ** They said defensively.  **_It grew back like that._ **

“Still doesn’t explain the rest of my mouth.”

**_You looked stupid with only one good tooth, Eddie, really really stupid._ **

A mental image of Eddie asleep a single sharp canine tooth poking out from his upper lip with a trail of drool running down to his pillow.

Eddie sighs. “Fair enough.”

He leans in towards the mirror and bares his teeth again. Really it’s only the slightly enlarged and more pointed canines that are noticeable. His incisors feel sharper but look mostly the same and his molars are also sharper and more pointed but hidden away in the back of his mouth they won’t be noticed. He draws his lips into a tight thin smile and none of his teeth stick out past them.

The weirdest part though is that his mouth doesn’t feel any different.

**_Was careful. Don’t want you biting yourself._ **

“Okay.” He grinned experimentally. He could tell his teeth were different, but maybe a stranger wouldn’t notice? Or maybe they would notice, but not say anything? Humans were really good at ignoring small things so long as you acted like they expected you to. So really it was the acting like people expected him to that would be difficult.

Welp, one way to tell.

Eddie pulled his phone out of his sweat pant’s pocket and opened up the group text between him, Anne, and Dan.

_ ‘Despite evidence to the contrary, I had a good time last night’ _

_ ‘Wanna meet up for dinner there again sometime?’ _

There’s no immediate response as his friends are both busy professional adults with jobs, but they’ll get back to him sooner or later.

Eddie wandered out of his bathroom and into the rest of his apartment, running his tongue over his teeth. As weird as they didn’t feel there was one thing that stood out about his upper canines and molars.

“V, why do I have grooves on the backs of my teeth?”

**_To keep you safe._ ** V responds and the hesitates.  **_Probably._ **

“Is this another--”

**_Us thing, yes._ **

Then it’ll probably be fine. Probably.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Little shorter this time, but that's how it is sometimes. I am so glad everyone is liking this fic, esp since it's busy season at work. Getting all the comment notifications puts a smile on my face every time. The next bit will be up on Tuesday at the ass crack of dawn.


	5. Chapter 5

“So you think this whole becoming us thing is slowing down now?” Eddie asked as he walked down one of San Francisco’s many hills on a cool Friday evening.

**_Almost_**. V responded after a moment of consideration from his position wrapped around Eddie’s neck doing a fantastic impression of a scarf.

“Any idea what’s next? Or is it a surprise?”

**_Guess_**. V says retreating into Eddie (quickly enough that probably no one saw) and shifting their mental self in an invitation for Eddie to examine the point where they join. **_I will make sure you keep walking_**.

Eddie doesn’t get much from their bond, a sense of anticipation and attention at the same time as stillness and resistance. He has no idea what the hell any of its supposed to mean but it's interesting to explore and it’s also nice to feel his other’s quiet joy over how well they’ve managed to bond with each other. Even if it means that V is probably paying more attention to him than they are to walking.

They’re so caught up in themselves that they don’t notice the man hiding in the alleyway until he grabs them and hauls them into said alleyway with an arm around Eddie’s neck.

“You’re a surprisingly hard man to track down, Mr. Brock.” The guy says, and Eddie has to think through his adrenaline for a moment before he remembers the men-in-black mystery assholes who had chased him under the pier over two and a half months ago.

“Not my fault you guys fucking suck at your jobs.” Eddie observes, mainly because it’s true. They hadn’t left him anything to go off of after their chase but he’d assumed they’d make another attempt in a more timely fashion. Eddie’d eventually got so caught up in other things that he had figured that they’d given up.

The MIB asshole tightens his arm around his neck and Eddie feels V moving towards his spine to mask him. _V, no, not right now_.

**_Why not_ ** ? Eddie gets the impression that while the symbiote doesn’t exactly _need_ it right now, they could do with a good meal.

_Information gathering_.

**_Fine_ **. They grumble and settle in underneath the back of Eddie’s neck and along his shoulders.

“Quiet!” The asshole hisses in his ear. “Mr. Schmidt is offering a lot of money for you alive, so don’t struggle with me and I won’t have to use this nice little noisemaker.”

Eddie grabs onto the name first and the threat second. Schmidt was one of a few billionaires that had bought up portions of the LIFE foundations assets when they had shut down their space division following the whole Drake fiasco. He had done cursory investigations into as many people involved as he could, but hadn’t been able to turn up anything more than a few social scandals on anyone of importance. Which either meant fantastic PR control or there really was nothing to see. There was also, now, the implication that Schmidt had, of all fucking things, a bounty put out on them, and Eddie supposed that explained why there hadn’t been a consistent hunt for them. Why bother with shitty pay when your target could literally eat you?

The ‘noisemaker’ meant that Eddie was probably going to have deal with most of this himself which was not something he wanted to do, but wasn’t anywhere near as daunting of a thought as it would have been three months ago.

**_Bite him Eddie_**.

That would work, sure, the only other thing he could think of was a headbutt and he didn’t really have the leverage for that. Should probably at least look into self defense later so he’d have more of a base to work off of.

It’s only when he breaks skin on the man’s forearm that Eddie recalls his new teeth.

Well, shit.

And then, for some reason, he keeps biting. It’s a reflex that’s mostly (but not entirely) coming from the place in their shared body where V becomes Eddie and Eddie becomes V.

Suddenly there’s a sour taste in Eddie’s mouth, which is good because it’s drowning out the coppery taste of blood (and Eddie doesn’t want to think too hard about the fact that someone else’s blood in his mouth is not a _bad_ taste per se), but bad because he has no idea what it is or where it’s coming from. He’s also getting steadily more concerned that he just can’t seem to get his jaw to unclench and stop biting.

**_It’s venom_**.

_What_.

**_You’re venomous, Eddie_**.

“What.” The new information (not entirely out of nowhere) is enough to get Eddie’s jaws to unclench and allow the MIB-for-hire-asshole to fall to the ground clutching his arm and screaming.

**_Don’t worry about it, can we eat this guy_ **?

“I guess! But--” _I think me suddenly being venomous is something I’d kinda like to worry about_! Eddie finished as V masked them, before he sank down into their shared consciousness. In the beginning Venom had been nearly all V, but now over half a year later it was a more even mix.

“ **It’s not sudden, it happened two weeks ago**.” They say in between bites.

_And we didn’t mention this because why?_ In their shared body singular pronouns were almost so difficult as to be impossible _. Also don’t eat his phone, we want to check it out._

Venom pauses long enough to pluck the man’s burner phone (a brick of a trac-phone) from their teeth and tuck it into their self near where Eddie’s body was.

**“We said it would keep us safe. Besides, we can’t hurt ourselves, and we need specific circumstances if we wanted to bite someone else**.” (adrenaline, tenseness of their jaw muscles, urge-to-hurt)

Where did that even come from? The other changes Eddie had gone through were at least improvements of things they’d already had, but they were pretty fucking sure that humans couldn’t produce literal venom.

**“We reflect ourselves.”**

_So we’re…?_

**“Yes.”** Then there’s a familiar new sensation as they finish off the merc-in-black of tenseness followed by a rich sour taste. **“Never needed it, hunting is so easy here.”** And it goes without saying that their venom would have been as good as useless against Riot’s bladed weapons.

The part of them that is Eddie isn’t entirely satisfied with their explanation and the part that is V doesn’t understand the relevance ( _I want to know what’s going on in my body_ , **_you don’t always_ ** **know** **_though you don’t know how each of your heartbeats feel,_ ** _but still_ ). Together they decide to move on, leaping over the panel van that the MIB jerk had probably meant to transport them in and disappearing into the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wondered how many people would guess that they were venomous and three ding-dang commenters in a row got in one! I did a non zero amount of research on rear-fang venomous snakes and types of snake venom for this bit (and as is the way of things almost none of it is directly included), but they're basically a boomslang.
> 
> Comments and kudos are very appreciated.


	6. Chapter 6

“ **Eddie, we’re done** .” V says aloud from their spot on Eddie's collarbone almost a week later as Eddie’s getting ready to go to sleep. “ **I want to go for a run**.”

Eddie sighs and starts putting his jeans back on. V’s excited enough that he’s not gonna win this argument, so he doesn’t even bother starting it. It’s not incredibly late (only 11:23 at night) and he’d been settling in for the night mainly for lack of anything else to do. Any articles were written and had either been turned in or were being edited, and any leads he had on what exactly Schmidt wanted with them would keep until he could follow up on them over the next couple days.

Then his brain catches up to what V had said.

_?_ He sends the impression of a question, the mental equivalent of an inquisitive noise.

“ **I want to show you something, Eddie**.” V nudges at his chin.

“Okay, let’s go then.”

In his mind Eddie steps back and V takes over as they dive under his skin. They casually walk his body to their apartments roof access and it's not like being piloted so much as it is like being in the passenger seat of a car. When they reach the roof V masks Eddie's body in their own, staying in control as they launch off of the roof.

A feeling of unease ripples through Venom's mind, unlike their usual even split, this time V has maintained the majority of control over Venom's form like they had in the beginning.

**_We want it to be a surprise, Eddie_ **. And if they merge evenly then they'll know everything the other is thinking.

_We understand_. Eddie murmurs, in this shape, even as one-sided as it is right now, they are close enough that singular is difficult to wrap their head around.

Eddie sinks into their bond as Venom races joyously across San Francisco on all fours. It's a slightly uncomfortable feeling. Because of the distance V has enforced between Eddie and Venom, Eddie can still feel his body under the symbiote's mass, moving in sync with their leaping gait. There are times when Eddie’s joints and limbs are subsumed and twisted out of shape to prevent damage as Venom contorts wildly. It doesn’t hurt but there’s an unpleasant awareness of exactly what’s happening to Eddie’s body inside Venom’s form.

It's still good though, the feeling of two-in-one beings almost as close to each other as they could possibly be.

V draws Eddie out of their bond once they reach their destination, a relatively small platform on the top of the Golden gate bridge's South tower. They’re sure there’s some amount of humor in their huge form towering over the guardrails meant to keep humans safe. The part of them that is Eddie follows the thought and there’s a huff of laughter across their bond before they realize precisely how high up they are.

The drop in Eddie’s stomach and tingling in Eddie’s limbs are more habit than actual fear response to the height they’re at. Wrapped in themselves as they are though, the shadow of Eddie’s fear has no bite.

_Wanted to show us something?_

“ **Don’t worry about seeing.** ” Venom rumbles, their pale eyes narrowing to slits. “ **Hard to explain, follow us.** ”

V led Eddie into their shared sensory cortex and cautiously hooked him into it. This was a part of Venom that V had always interpreted for Eddie. They claimed it would overwhelm his wimpy human brain, but that apparently wasn’t the case now.

The contrast is immediately noticeable. The world always seemed sharper and brighter and more intense to Eddie when they were Venom even though there was a disconnect between the part-that-was-him and their senses. Now they could feel everything all at once and were very grateful that they had thought to close their eyes.

They have a perfect awareness of their body. There is an utter certainty to the positioning of their limbs and the part that is Eddie realizes that they could move however they wanted whenever they wanted with the barest hint of intention. They feel Eddie’s body tucked safely underneath Venom’s mass, it’s solid and stable right now but that could also change with the barest thought.

There was even more when they allowed their senses to extend beyond themselves.

Slight vibrations traveled up the bridge to their legs and they could feel the cars drive by on the deck below them easily. Deeper than that though, they could feel the hum of the bridge itself as the bay breeze wove between the trusses and suspension cables. It’s easy to understand why they are so sensitive to sound when they feel the vibrations in the very air around them. There’s also more than just the sound of the world around them in the air, the air brings an innate knowledge of the world beyond themselves. It’s a strange combined sense of pressure and movement, an instinctive knowledge of up and down that can never be confused, and the tug of the ground beneath them.

It’s no wonder Eddie’s fear of heights seemed silly to them.

“ **Hold on to this feeling.** ”

They do, even as V retreats back into Eddie’s body leaving him standing in the chill wind seven hundred and fifty feet above sea level. He sucks in a breath and braces for a panic that doesn’t come.

Instead the same certainty Venom had felt had settled in Eddie’s body. He stands steady against the wind and shifting of the bridge beneath his feet. He would have assumed V was using tendrils of their self to brace him, except he could very definitely feel that they were doing no such thing. Which was also new now that he thought of it.

**“Told you it was hard to explain.”** V suddenly emerged from Eddie’s right shoulder, and instead of having his balance thrown off, Eddie compensated almost immediately.

“Still not sure I get it, bud.” Even though he’s pretty sure he would only fall off the bridge if he wanted to (Ha ha ha, nope), Eddie was still feeling nervous. Mainly because his stupid brain didn’t seem to like having it’s fear seemingly dealt with at the root, so why not settle for a little generalized anxiety instead?

**“Perfect awareness of our bodies, it is why I did not understand your fear of heights until you explained it to me.”**

Eddie nods distractedly, it’s not awful up here now that he’s utterly sure he won’t accidentally overbalance and fall to his death. There’s also a soft pulsing of contentment radiating from V that feels almost like instinct.

“You like it up here?” Eddie reached up to scratch the side of V’s head and his other leaned into his hand.

**“Yesssss… We like heights, they’re safer.”**

“We? Like… Klyntar?” Probably didn’t mangle the name of V’s species.

A sense of satisfied confirmation. **“Harder to be surprised up high.”**

“Sorry I kept you from it, then.” And before Eddie can feel guilty V reassures him.

**“You’re mine, would never choose different.”**

And what can Eddie do in response to that but settle down? They’re both content to sit and watch the city lights across the bay, satisfaction and companionship and love feeding back and forth between them.

Whatever else happens, Eddie’s pretty sure it’ll be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next bit should be up sometime Saturday, but may be up Sunday depending on RL things. I'm also going to make a series for this AU because I do want to write more and I figure that some of you guys would like notifications when I eventually post things. 
> 
> Thank you all for the comments and kudos, they make me smile during a long, stressful workday.


	7. Chapter 7

They ended up spending nearly an hour on top of the Golden Gate Bridge before setting out for home. They unmasked halfway there because Eddie wanted to take his time getting used to his new sense of…

_What did you say it was called again, V?_

**_Proprioception._ **

Yeah, that. It wasn’t too different so long as he was moving, but if he was still the potential his body had for motion really stood out. So he takes the slow way home, pausing every so often to take in the scenery and accustom himself to the way he feels like he could just start moving and never stop.

It’s past one in the morning by the time they reach the block that holds their apartment building, and V nudges Eddie’s mind before they can get any closer.

**_There are bad men inside our apartment, Eddie._ **

“What kind?” Eddie stops at the curb.

**_Men-In-Black Assholes, three of them, armed._ **

“Well, shit.” So much for going to sleep in their own bed now. They could technically go to Anne’s for the night, but Eddie really doesn’t want to bring their trouble to her doorstep. He also really doesn’t want to let these dicks drive him out of his own home even if it’s just for one night. But they’re obviously well prepared. The last two times they’d run into Schmidt’s hired goons they had clearly been equipped to face them and they were adjusting tactics. If a large group didn’t work, send a single well prepared guy against your target, and if that didn’t work send a small group to your targets home. They were dialing in tactics and the longer Eddie and V allowed their opponent to chase them the higher chance Schmidt had of actually catching them.

**_Want to do something dumb, Eddie?_ **

“Not really.”

**_Edddieeee…_ **

“Why would I knowingly agree to a plan you’ve said is dumb?”

**_Because you trust us?_ **

“With my life, but V--”

**_We are an ambush predator, Eddie, let me show you._ **

That draws Eddie up short. He’s thought of himself as many things over his lifetime (a victim of circumstance, the best damn reporter in San Francisco, and an utter fuckup) but never a predator in any sense of the word.

**_But that’s what you do Eddie, you sneak up on people and trap them with their own words. It is part of why we have bonded so well._ **

And dammit, V’s not entirely wrong.

But still, Eddie can’t help but think of the noisemaker they’d been threatened with. He knew sound hurt V and he’d felt the reflection of that pain multiple times. Now, after feeling how attuned to the world around them they were as Venom, he couldn’t imagine willingly going to face something like that.

**_Want to protect our home, Eddie, besides we reflect ourselves remember?_ **

“Yeah, yeah…” He remembered the hours they’d spent under the pier, V revealing one of the more intimate facets of their bond. It had been a quiet wonder to discover the effects they had on each other, even if Eddie seemed to be on the receiving end of most of said effects.

**_Noisemaker won’t be a problem, Eddie, figured out a trick._ **

“Y’sure?”

 **_Yessss, so let’s go._ ** Eddie’s muscles tremble with V’s desire to deal with the threat, but they’re holding themselves back with an undercurrent of together-or-not-at-all.

“Alright, let’s do something stupid.” If everything went to shit they could probably fight their way out. Besides, V’s territorialism was starting to rub off on Eddie.

It’s V who pushes them forward, resting eagerly just below Eddie’s skin, but it’s Eddie who continues until they’re climbing the stairs up to his apartment bolstered by V’s confidence. V gives him a glimpse of the three merc’s positions through their sense of the world, only slightly muffled by Eddie’s flesh. There’s one on either side of the front door and the third is more distant, probably behind the couch.

They enter casually, Eddie following along with V’s quiet urgings, and take care to turn around completely to lock the door behind them instead of just lightly kicking it shut like they normally would. It’s an opportunity that the MIB mercs are all too eager to take advantage of, and Eddie is suddenly aware of the guns that the two flanking the door had aimed at them. The third is fumbling around with something directly behind him.

“You guys know it is astoundingly rude to point guns at a guy in his own home?” Because even if Eddie is concerned for their shared safety, he can’t not snark at men pointing guns at him.

“Man, shut up.” The merc behind them says, and then, after a light click, Eddie hears one of the worst sounds he’s ever heard in his life.

The sound drills almost immediately into the center of his head.

It’s composed of multiple tones and frequencies, like whoever designed it wasn’t sure what would work and decided to just throw shit at a wall and see what stuck, but all of them would be unpleasant for a normal person much less the conjoined being that Eddie and V have become. For them it’s worse, dissonant sounds building and shifting and piling on top of each other until Eddie’s sure he’s going to vomit.

One thing strikes him as his legs buckle and he falls to his knees, sure this sound is bad, but it’s still not the ripping pain of the MRI or speaker feedback. None of the frequencies are quite right and the volume is nowhere near enough to do anything on it’s own. Something's not quite right but Eddies can’t determine what.

Eddie collapses, being tugged to ground as he feels the full added weight of V in his body not doing anything to support them. The symbiote almost seems like they’re losing cohesion, bleeding through Eddie’s skin in rough, rippling patches.

“Wha…?” Eddie’s barely able to groan much less form a thought.

A spike of pain straight into his temporal lobes is soothed away as quickly as it appears.

**_shhhhh… eddie… quiet… stopping the bad sounds… can’t do anything else… no talking… no moving…_ **

V gives Eddie the basics, this is step one of their dumb plan: feign weakness and get caught. They’re maintaining a careful balance spread as wide throughout Eddie as they can be and as stiff as they can manage anchoring themselves into the stillness of Eddie’s bones. They’re being the worst conductor of sound they know how to be and it’s working so far. It muffles everything including the tones from the Merc’s noisemaker. There’s also the sense that they could get better at this if they had a chance to practice.

 _now what?_ Eddie wonders, the thought barely strong enough for V to notice.

**they take us to their den… we strike… we eat... go home…**

_ok… gonna rest…_ Might as well recover some while V follows through with their dumb plan, whatever they’re doing to deaden the noise is expending a surprising amount of energy.

 **_got us…_ **Then they fall limp.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So originally this was going to be very different and much shorter and then it grew some fucking legs! So I've split it into two bits and the second part will be up either this evening when I get back from seeing Into the Spiderverse or tomorrow (Sunday) morning depending on how much editing I need to do.
> 
> I also made a series for when I write more of this AU, in case you want to get notifications.


	8. Chapter 8

…

…

…

**_…!_ **

_…?_

**_…!_ **

When Eddie wakes they’re masked and stalking the perimeter of some lab eerily reminiscent of the LIFE Foundation with fluorescent light and stainless steel and touch screens projected onto panes of glass everywhere. There are differences, there are no holding cells, the sense of desperation is more academic than sterile and hungry, but there are still things that chill their limbs and make their heart stutter. Still images of the people killed at the hands of Carlton Drake, stellar maps charting the path of the asteroid that the Klyntar had sent their scouting party from as it now moved out of the solar system, and an airtight tank in the center of the room just slightly too small for a man.

Venom’s body is larger than normal, tissue spongy and full of air and dead space. Instead of smooth curves of dense not-quite-muscle they’ve formed planes and angles. It’s changed their posture somewhat, they’re leaning forward almost on all fours prowling among abandoned workstations like the predator they are. At some point it seemed V had figured out that if they lowered their density, increased their volume, and altered their shape the terrible sounds would be incapable of penetrating their body and shaking them apart at the seam where they’re welded to their Eddie.

An alarm is sounding, but Venom only knows that because when they start to relax their angular shape pain creeps into their core. Otherwise the only thing they hear are their footsteps and the steady beat of their heart.

 _What have we been doing?_ They murmur after coming to full awareness, both halves awake and in complete contact.

 **_Broke containment, figured out how to deal with this--_ ** a mental gesture indicating the repetitive pulsing of the alarm that they couldn’t hear but could feel washing over them **_\--ate some bad men, been exploring…_ **

_So, we’ve been having a good time then?_

**_Yesss…_ ** They grin so hard they nearly squint their eyes shut, savoring the memories together now.

_Anything left?_

**_One thing left, we needed to be all here for it. We’re not sure what to do, and we don’t want to upset ourself._ ** Venom looked across the lab to where a man ( _Schmidt_ , they recognize now that they’re not half asleep) has locked himself in an office walled with thick, sealed, glass panes. Schmidt was sitting stiffly at his desk with the grey look of a man who had been watching his certain death pacing before him for the last ten minutes.

 **_Hasn’t shot at us, hasn’t threatened us. This is his fault but he’s important and we’re not supposed to eat important people…_ ** They trail off uncertainly. It would have been harder had Venom not had their fill of mercenary, but still now that they were fully awake they were very pleased with their restraint.

 **“Why did you hunt us, Mr. Schmidt?”** They growl as one, coming to a stop outside the man’s office.

“Because,” He swallows as they read his lips, unable to actually hear the man's voice through their sound deadening shape “You’re a dangerous creature that shouldn’t be allowed to run free…”

They can’t help the low hiss that emerges from deep in their chest.

“And as… misguided… as Carlton was,” Schmidt continued after a steadying breath, “I believe he was right in studying the creatures.”

 **“DRAKE WAS A MONSTER!”** Venom’s fist slams against the glass, hairline crack running out from the point of impact. **“He killed dozens! Humans and Symbiote! Whatever he thought he would gain WAS NOT WORTH IT!”**

“And you haven’t killed anyone?” This was a man who expected to die.

**“We won’t deny that. But they’ve all come for us or were as monstrous as Drake.”**

They leaned into the glass further spreading the cracks, and a thought occurred to them.

**_He wants to protect people?_ **

_From us…_

**_Like Anne wants to make sure we are not hurting Eddie?_ **

_Yes, similar._

**“But we won’t kill you.”**

“Wh-why?” Schmidt stuttered out, as they sat back on their haunches.

 **“Because we’re not stupid. It would be noticed if you went missing and what you’re trying to do here is not bad.”** Schmidt’s San Francisco lab was well known for its research on various genetic conditions. **“So use whatever data you bought off of LIFE, but leave us alone and we’ll leave you alone.”**

With one last growl they turned and left, following their senses up and out. There had been multiple doors barring their way, but even with Venom’s strength limited by their shape, they crash through them easily. Once Venom reached the roof and could no longer feel the steady pulsing of the building’s alarm, they condensed their body back to its usual shape and launched themselves into the air.

V’s knowledge tells them their position relative to the fading morning stars and they take off towards the north and their apartment. It only takes fifteen minutes and they spend it in silence, thoughts churning.

 **_Was that smart, Eddie?_ ** V wonders internally after they’ve unmasked and retreated inside their apartment, Eddie carefully shutting the door behind them with his foot this time.

“Probably not.” Eddie threw himself onto the couch, exhausted. “But you had your dumb idea and I had mine.”

**_Fair enough._ **

**_What if he still comes after us?_ ** V asks with a narrow stream of anxiety coming through their bond. Eddie follows it for a moment because surely V can’t be worried about them after all that, and he discovers it stems from concern for Anne and Dan.

“Didn’t seem like that kind of guy, probably was just throwing money at a problem. Thought we were indiscriminate when we have to eat and wanted to protect people from us.”

**_We’re not._ **

“Exactly.” Eddie stretched luxuriously on his couch, basking in the stillness. There’s still some concern though so he adds, “I’ll see about getting a guy to keep an eye on them, shouldn’t be hard.”

It was only fair since Eddie was pretty sure Schmidt would be monitoring them.

“So that sound deadening thing, you figure that out on your own or is it an Us Thing?” Eddie offers the question as an obvious distraction from their concern.

 **_Both. Saw your memories of recording studios._ ** A series of still memories of the various sound studios Eddie’d done voiceover and narration work in. **_Thought we could be like the foam and kill sound, but it was hard. Had to anchor in your bones to keep the noise from our bond. Easier when we are Venom._ **

**_Would be impossible if we weren’t so close._ **

Even though adapting to their environment is literally what V was born to do, Eddie was still in awe of how quickly they were able to adapt. He knows from their time together as Venom that this skill V’s come up with has limits. They can’t do it if they’re taken by surprise, if they’re Eddie-and-V they can’t move or speak and it uses so much more energy, and Venom is weaker and slower using it. But still…

“You’re kind of amazing, y’know?”

 **_Of course._ ** They send smugly, but there's also an overwhelming sense of awe-wonder-joy-love- _more_ that Eddie takes in and then returns in kind.

V’s head emerged from the center of Eddie’s chest with a small rumble and he covered the top of their head lightly with his hand, rubbing small circles on their forehead with his thumb.

“Anyway, let’s get some rest, okay?”

**“Okay.”**

And together they dozed off, complete and comfortable with each other’s presence and their body. Whatever happened, they would deal with it together and it didn’t matter in this moment anyway.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really didn't want Schmidt to be yet another evil rich guy, I figured he's understandably concerned about this monster alien on the loose that he got info on and is trying to act benevolently from a position of fear and ignorance.
> 
> In case you didn't see las chapter, I've made a series for this AU in case you want notifications for other fics in this AU.
> 
> Into the Spiderverse was very good, btw, I highly recommend seeing it if you're able to. Just please be aware that there are a lot of flashing lights and colors.
> 
> Thank you all for reading this far, I hope you enjoyed it!

**Author's Note:**

> I'm going to try to update every other day. 
> 
> Comments/Kudos are very welcome, ~~but out of curiosity is there any sort of etiquette in regards to responding to comments? I haven't posted anything other than a Venom fic here recently and before that I was mostly on ff . net...~~ Thanks for the reassurance, I'll be replying to people as time allows so long as things don't get too crazy.


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